| GROUP IV | FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND SIMILAR; |
23. HAY-SCENTED FERN
Dicksonia pilosiuscula (D. punctilobula)
Two to three feet high; hill-sides, meadows, and thickets from Canada to Tennessee.
Fronds.—Ovate-Iance-shaped, long-tapering, pale-green, thin and very delicate in texture, slightly glandular and hairy, usually thrice-pinnatifid; pinnæ lance-shaped, pointed, repeating in miniature outline of frond; pinnules cut again into short and obtuse lobes or segments; fruit-dots each on an elevated globular receptacle on a recurved toothlet; indusium cup-shaped, open at the top.}}
In parts of the country, especially from Connecticut southward, the Hay-scented Fern is one of the abundant plants. Though not essentially a rock-loving plant, it rejoices in such rocky, upland pastures as crown many of our lower mountain ranges, "great stretches of grayish or sage-green fields in which every bowlder and outcrop of rock is marked by masses of the bright-green fronds of Dicksonia, over which the air moves lazily, heavy with the peculiar fragrance of this interesting fern." Its singularly delicate, tapering, pale-green fronds, curving gracefully in every direction, rank it among our most beautiful and noticeable ferns. Often along the roadsides it forms great masses of feathery foliage, tempting the weary pedestrian or bicycler to fling himself upon a couch sufficiently soft and luxurious in appearance to satisfy a sybarite. But I can testify that the Hay-scented Fern does not make so good a bed as it promises.
Two years ago, during a memorably hot August,
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